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[0:00] Tonya Pinkins: Hi, this is Tonya Pinkins. My guest today is, wow, I don't even know how to say, he's a teacher, he's a director, he's a writer, he's an actor, he's an artist. I just want to dive right in so you can hear the wisdom of Larry Moss.

[0:30] Larry Moss: Tonya, it's great to see you.

[0:38] Tonya Pinkins: Oh, Larry, it is so great to see you. And you're here in New York?

[0:41] Larry Moss: Yes.

[0:42] Tonya Pinkins: I had no idea. So you're coaching like crazy and your computer's filled with coaching, and is it recording all of them? So you got recordings in there too?

[0:51] Larry Moss: Some of them, yeah, some of them I have. And it's a whole new world. I mean, the last seven months I've been virtual, you know what I mean? I mean, I've spent 48 years being live, and suddenly I'm on this machine. But it's so wonderful to see your face. But it just feels like another world for all of us. And it's a little lonely and disconnected. But thank God for our craft. You know, I was teaching a monologue class yesterday, and we did 10 actors and actresses on great, great writers. And there was so much beauty. Even though we were on a machine, I could feel the touch. So it's possible.

[1:43] Tonya Pinkins: What are you? So if you're doing monologues, that's for the theater, right?

[1:48] Larry Moss: Yes.

[1:48] Tonya Pinkins: How has your coaching adjusted for people who are auditioning for the theater, which requires a great deal more muscularity? But when you put that on screen, it kind of doesn't work. So...

[2:03] Larry Moss: You know, it's very interesting. I was talking with some actors and actresses yesterday, and they were saying they're being coached to be very simple and not move around a lot and be ready for the camera. And I was saying, yeah, for certain jobs, certain television roles, certain film roles. But when you look at, you know, obviously Meryl Streep or Denzel Washington or Daniel Day-Lewis or Joaquin Phoenix or Viola Davis, they are not small. They're not monochrome, you know, kind of just... They use their face, they use their emotions, they use their bodies. And they're the big actors and actresses. And I was saying to them, learn the theater technique, have a voice, have a body that's expressive behaviorally. And when you need to bring it down to a small screen or a close-up, of course you do less. But that doesn't stop your internal needs and desire and character. I think there's a big misunderstanding about that.

[3:20] Tonya Pinkins: Yeah, I don't understand. I sometimes try to figure out like, you know, I love being big. I love what the theater allows you to do. And then I'll look at it on screen and be like, oh, yeah. I gotcha. But it depends where the camera is, what the part is. Because, you know, I always say, underacting is as bad as overacting. It's just less embarrassing.

[3:46] Larry Moss: Mm-hmm. So it's like learning the medium you're working in. Nobody wants to see anybody face act or over-gesticulate or be acting. We want human beings on the screen and on the stage. But every character is different. So it's not such a simple answer. You know, the big thing that people will say, just throw it away. Sometimes on television, they'll say, throw it away.

[4:14] Tonya Pinkins: Yeah, what is that?

[4:16] Larry Moss: Just throw it away. Don't say anything. Don't do anything. Just say the line. OK, cut, print, go. They didn't embarrass themselves. And then you go, and who is having the big careers? I mean, I saw Fences with Denzel and Viola three times. And I watched them grow and grow and grow and grow. And then I watched them do the movie. I mean, that's a perfect example. And they're not that much different. It's just you hold it. I want to say this the right way, because it's such a complex and misunderstood idea. And the one way that I think I can be clear about it is to say, put it through the eyes on film. And if you have certain things, for instance, I was coaching an actress on a movie that she wanted and the director wanted her.

It was like a billion dollar movie. And the director sent her to me. And he said, can you fix her? I went, we love her, but there's something wrong. So she came over to my house. And we started working on the script. And she was gesturing with her lower lip, like pressing it down, but wasn't aware of it. And I said, are you aware that there's tension in your lower lip? And right before she said, no, I'm not. She did it. I said, do you see what your lip just did? And she went, oh, my God. I do that all the time. I said, don't do that. Don't let your lip, don't go to the tension in your mouth. And we worked through the scene. She went back for the final screen test and she got it.

[6:15] Tonya Pinkins: How did you catch that?

[6:16] Larry Moss: Well, 48 years of teaching and observing behavior and observing the way people breathe and where they hold tension. Part of my work as a teacher is I go, how is the actor breathing and where are they holding body tension? And that usually comes from childhood and from trauma. We all do things to defend ourselves. And when you find what the defense mechanisms are that stop the flow of your impulses, you've got it.

[6:59] Tonya Pinkins: But can't that also sometimes make for a very interesting actor because their particular set of tensions and neuroses just makes them interesting on screen?

[7:09] Larry Moss: If it's right for the parts, it's got to be right for the writer.

[7:15] Tonya Pinkins: How do you know that? Nobody taught you that, that wasn't in a book. How do you know that?

[7:21] Larry Moss: Thousands and thousands of hours on teaching. Enormous amounts of being on movie sets, working in the Broadway theater. I coach films, I coach television, I coach theater, and it's been my life.

[7:42] Tonya Pinkins: You've got the master, well beyond the 10,000 hours of mastery of this craft of acting.

[7:49] Larry Moss: Yes, it's my life. When I was working with the 10 actors yesterday, they were so on fire and we were working on George Bernard Shaw and we were working on Shakespeare and we were working on Tennessee Williams and we were working on Arthur Miller and we were working on Adam Rapp and working some of the new writers.

[8:16] Larry Moss: Going back to the 40s when women were not seen as writers, yet there was Lillian Hellman. If you go back to Lillian Hellman to The Little Foxes or The Children's Hour, women were starting to have voices. Now we have Paula Vogel and we have this litany of human beings, different races, different genders, different nationalities of people that are writing about the human experience. Now we are all together in this pandemic and we are all together in the economic crisis. You know, Tonya, I don't even want to say this to you because it makes me very sad. We all watch George Floyd and you can't be the same. The audience that's going to come back to the theater when God blesses it comes back is a different set of millions of people because of what we've all been through.

[9:29] Tonya Pinkins: I hope you're right because I don't know. I don't know, 74 million people, you know, said something different. They didn't see what I was seeing.

[9:41] Larry Moss: No, but sometimes, Tonya, collectively in the theater, the human heart vibrates together. You see it in an audience. What were you going to say?

[9:53] Tonya Pinkins: No, I think that the theater is the closest as you can get to a real life experience and be transformed, have that amygdala shift.

[10:02] Larry Moss: Yes. So I have a lot of hope and I have a lot of excitement. I'm also getting actors and actresses to write. I taught a writing class where people were writing autobiographical material and out of it came a movie that's been written. Out of it came a one person show. People had emotional and psychological breakthroughs by writing about things they were scared of, things they were celebrating. I have this hunch that there are hidden writers and actors and actresses they never find. And I want to say to every actor and actress, sit down every day and write for five minutes. Even if you write, I don't know what to write. I'm not a writer. I don't know what I'm doing. In fact, one woman in my class wrote a monologue about not being able to write a monologue.

And then she started hearing voices from Ireland and Russia and she became all these different people who were trying to help her. It was so brilliant. And it came out of her madness of frustration. So she had these sub-personalities of different nationalities who talked to her. And that is a play. And she's writing it. There is so much to be found and there is so much love and hope and desire. And I look at the younger generation of actors and actresses and they want us to guide them, help them, love them, see them, nurture them, be with them. So that's where my brain is at. And I get to talk to you.

[11:51] Tonya Pinkins: And people can't see you, but you are on fire. I was going to ask you, do you live alone? Are you alone in this pandemic?

[11:55] Larry Moss: Yes, I'm alone.

[11:58] Tonya Pinkins: So no contact with anybody for nine months? Or are there any people you social distance meet with?

[12:03] Larry Moss: A little bit, but I'm very paranoid because I'm much older. And I know at my age, if I get sick, I could die. I mean, I'm in that age where... And I go, you know what? This is what all the years of therapy have finally given me, Tonya. I have someone within me that's alive that I can talk to. I'm not dead inside. And I talk to people every day. I have dear friends. I talk to students every day. I watch great films. I sing. I meditate. I read the great books. And I'm learning. And that's one thing about getting older is you go, every moment is precious. And every feeling you have, don't judge it, explore it.

[13:11] Tonya Pinkins: Yeah, but I'm so frigging angry right now. Okay, what's it about?

[13:17] Larry Moss: Yes. Right? I'm so scared right now. What's it about?

[13:21] Tonya Pinkins: Yes. Don't be afraid of your fear.

[13:25] Larry Moss: Yes. That is exactly where I am. It's like whatever you're feeling, it's going to pass. So embrace it while you got it. Oh my God, this hurts so bad. It hurts so bad. It hurts so bad. It's gone. Oh my God, this feels so good. This feels so good. It feels good. It's gone. Embrace it. Bless everything that's coming.

[13:48] Tonya Pinkins: Yes. And that's being alive. Every breath, every visual. I have a lot of paintings in my apartment. And I have a brilliant print of a painting by Degas called Woman with the Flowers. Just a woman sitting at a table with a gigantic bouquet of flowers. And every single day, I kid you not, I see something new in that painting. Look it up. I got to see it. The woman with the flowers, the amount of shading, color, character, what's on the walls, what's on the door frames, the handkerchief she's holding, the different whites, the different purples, the different blues. It's genius.

[14:34] Larry Moss: I have a painting you can see behind me. It's green. But if you look closely within that green is yellow, red, aqua, navy blue, black, purple. And it pops the green. All the nuances. And my great teacher Stella Adler said, the first day of our class, she said, thank you for coming to my class. Now please go to Central Park and pick me 20 different shades of green. And we all went to the park like we were insane. And we're picking up grass. And okay, this is yellow, green. This is chartreuse. This is dark green. This is forest green. And we came to her office and we dumped all of the leaves and grass. She said, that's acting. Wow. Wow. You and I both studied with Stella and Warren Robertson. Yes. And I was lucky enough. My first teacher was Sanford Meisner.

[15:37] Tonya Pinkins: Oh, well, yeah. I got Bill Esper, who was, you know, a generation down from Sanford Meisner. Bill was wonderful.

[15:42] Larry Moss: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And I also got to study with you. So you've been around a long time. And I tell people that, you know, you're lucky if you get to be around a long time. What do you know now that you're imparting that's beyond the gift you give people as artists? What do you know that you're like, besides what you just said about embracing your feelings? What's the wisdom you have?

[16:12] Larry Moss: Well, I can tell you, Tonya, when you ask me that question right now, I'm in tears. And I'll tell you what I learned. What I learned is respect and love for every actor and actress I work with. And that they come with their history. And when you understand that human beings have a history from the moment they are conceived to the moment you meet them, they are carrying so much feeling and so much thought. And if you can help them be safe and introduce them to great writers, they give birth to the artist inside of them. Through writers, I say the greatest symbiosis I know is when the hand of the actor or actress takes the hand of a good writer. And art is born. And I say to my students, read the great plays.

Go back and read the great American plays, the great European plays. Go back to the Greeks. Go back to Shakespeare. Read every day. I read every day. I work on scripts every day. And when I look at a person in front of me, and I may go, oh, they're so blocked. They're so rigid. I go, that's fear. Can you help them breathe? Can you help them relax their shoulders?

[17:44] Larry Moss: And yesterday, I was working with a very young guy whose father had just died. And he was very blocked. And then he remembered his, he remembered the grass at the graveside. And I had another student, a woman who had the same experience. They saw the funeral. And when they saw the grass, the time of day, the people that were next to them at the funeral, what they were wearing, what the air was like, they burst open. And they were so much joy and sadness, because they understood what a place is, what a smell is, what a visual is, what the sound of the wind is. Those sensory things that we're taught, that what we see, smell, taste, touch, and hear evoke every emotion you'll ever have. And acting is a craft, you know?

I'm working on this extraordinary film right now. I can't say who I'm working with, but the person I'm working with, who's very successful, is working with a very famous other person. And they were talking to me about the rehearsal process. And they said, everybody was going, all these great actors and actresses were saying, what's our moment before? What are we doing right before the scene? And that was the discussion. Where are we as we come into the scene? And these have to be some very famous actors that they have the luxury of getting ready to have a rehearsal-type conversation about such things on a film.

[19:37] Larry Moss: Oh, yeah. They're a group of the best actors in the world. And the director is serious. And he loves actors and actresses. He trusts them. And he says, let's talk. Very exciting. Very exciting. Let's have a conversation. You know, I just made a film, which you can see behind me, Red Pill. And I hired my friends who were great theater actors. And because I didn't have a big budget and I didn't have a lot of time, there were two scenes in that movie that were about 10 pages each. And I said, we're going to have to shoot these like it's a theater scene. We're going to have to shoot them straight through because they were actors that are fine theater actors. They could do that for me. And then I could just run that scene over and over and put the camera on each of them separately and get their reactions.

And what I've learned as a writer is I write a lot of dialogue for my actors and then I cut it. And if I've shot all their performances, then I can build the scene I need out of the performances and the dialogue is gone.

[20:42] Larry Moss: Brilliant. That's brilliant. And that's your education, Tonya, everything that you've been through as a human being, you're a survivor. Always known that about you. And I'm a survivor too. And I can't obviously speak for you, but for me watching the great films I had as a child, because my background was tough. I felt very alone, but I went to the movies and I saw the greats. And when I saw James Dean and Jovan Fleet, and I watched the writers, John Steinbeck, Clifford Odets, Paddy Chayefsky, and I saw the people like James Earl Jones and the great white hope. I saw Kim Stanley live when I was 15. A lot of people don't know who Kim Stanley was, but all of the people, whoever you are, that's listening, see a movie, you can get it called The Goddess.

Oh, okay. The Goddess with Kim Stanley written by Paddy Chayefsky with Lloyd Bridges and Kim Stanley about Marilyn Monroe. They don't say it's Marilyn, but it's based on her life. And when you watch Kim Stanley in The Goddess, and then you watch Seance on a Wet Afternoon with Kim Stanley and Richard Attenborough, you'll go, oh, you mean greatness. And then you watch James Earl Jones. People used to line up at James Earl Jones' dressing table, a line of 50 people waiting until he came out and they would hug him and cry. That's how remarkable what James Earl, that's how remarkable what James Earl Jones gave your race in the play, The Great White Hope. And he changed my life.

[23:02] Larry Moss: So the artists, everybody who's listening, you as a writer, as a superb actress, we are human beings first. And what has happened to us in our life is the paint and the nature of every performance we give, and our imagination is us. And when you imagine something, you know, actors say, do I have to have lived it? I go, you can use something that really happened, or you can imagine it happened. Imagine it with people that you love. Use your imagination. Well, I've got to live it. If I can't live it, I can't act it. I go, that's not true. It's all available. You use everything. If I imagine it deeply enough, you know, I had to play a part when I was younger of a young man in a factory of immigrants, and he was poor, and he was here illegally.

But the man who ran the sweatshop was very cruel to women, and he would stand up for the women at the expense of his job, at his livelihood, because he couldn't stop it. And I said, what can I find to use? And I just took a breath, and I suddenly saw this man in a sweaty t-shirt punch a woman in the mouth, and she went hurtling backwards and hit her head on a radiator, and had cracked her head, and she was bleeding and moaning, and I was holding her, and that was my mother. And I started sobbing, and I'll tell you, that performance was one of the best things I ever did. And guess what? That never happened to me. I imagined it, the sweat, the smell, the blood, the moaning, the warmth of her body, and my little hands caressing her. And I'm emotional right now. It was me, but it was my imagination.

[25:16] Larry Moss: Yes. You can use everything. You are your imagination. Yes. You know, you can put someone that you love in a situation that is hilarious, and you can laugh your ass off, or put yourself in a situation that could happen, but hasn't happened, and imagine it, and laugh your ass off, or sob your guts out, or get pissed off. And I will say to people listening that this is how Larry coaches. The last time I coached Larry was a play that I was doing, which was kind of a solo play, and we got on the phone, and we had conversations, and he had read the script, and we talked about what I could imagine, and he planted seeds for me to imagine things, and this was a play called Time Alone that I did in Los Angeles a few years ago, and won a lot of awards, from sitting and just having conversations with Larry.

You and Alice Spivak, who we lost a couple of weeks ago, were two people who would say, you go, you have a couple tea, you get the job. That's right. It's your gift. And it's joy. Your pure joy. You know, we were having trouble trying to get the electronics to work so we could do this interview.

[26:51] Tonya Pinkins: Yes. I was sitting there, and I'm having agita, and I'm going, why doesn't it work? What have I done wrong? And then I go, we're going to fix it.

[26:59] Larry Moss: You stayed with it. I stayed with it. And here we are. You don't stop. Life is joy. Life is learning, and it never stops unless we stop it. And there's, actors and actresses can succeed if they will embrace who they are. Read. Get on the platform and act. Get out of their comfort zone and do a part that scares them. Work every day. This is Tonya Pinkins. Thank you for listening to part one of my conversation with Larry Moss. Do come back for part two on You Can't Say That on the Broadway Podcast Network.